


Bread does not nourish me

by zjofierose



Series: Form Ficlets! [3]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: (but who can blame him), Angst with a Happy Ending, Caring, Feeding, Hand Feeding, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Keith (Voltron) is a Mess, Light Angst, M/M, Protective Shiro (Voltron), Shiro (Voltron) is a Good Boyfriend, Shiro (Voltron) is a Good Friend, hunger
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-28
Updated: 2018-11-28
Packaged: 2019-09-01 17:03:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16769278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zjofierose/pseuds/zjofierose
Summary: Keith, Shiro thinks, needs someone to feed him. To care for him.





	Bread does not nourish me

I.

Keith is small for his age when he arrives at the Garrison, short and skinny, boney in the way teens that age can be, burning through calories as fast as they can consume them. He has a habit also of shrinking into himself, of hunching his shoulders and ducking his head, of making himself less, which contributes to his appearance of exaggerated youth. When Shiro first lays eyes on him in a random classroom, he thinks maybe Keith’s a precocious student who’s younger than the rest, but his Garrison admittance form lists him clearly as fifteen, with a birthday coming soon. 

What he needs, Shiro thinks when he catches a glimpse of Keith in his gym shorts on the training floor, is feeding up. 

\--

He watches Keith in the mess hall for a few weeks, watches how he never leaves a scrap of food on his plate, even if he’s gotten what’s clearly too much and is struggling to finish it. He notices the tell tale bulge in Keith’s sleeves, the disappearance of his napkins, the way he’ll occasionally drop crumbs as he’s leaving from the leftovers he’s squirreling away. 

Shiro has a private word with the head cook and the night shift janitor, and the next time he catches Keith alone, he sneaks him down to the mess hall’s back entrance and teaches him the entry code. 

Keith watches him suspiciously, dark eyes too big in his small face. 

“So I can just… come take food.” It’s less a question, and more a challenge, and Shiro nods cheerfully even as he bites his tongue not to comment on how this should not be remarkable.

“Yep!” he says, and watches as Keith slowly keys in the code and opens the door, watching Shiro out of the corner of his eye as though waiting for a trap to be sprung at any moment. “You know,” Shiro continues blithely, “like if you get hungry after training. Or you need a midnight snack.” 

He guides Keith into the kitchen with a hand at the small of his back, points him at the tray that’s been left out with the apples and small bags of nuts and trail mix, all things that are more compactly portioned and easily contained than the assortment of bread, cold noodles, and sliced fruit that Shiro’s seen Keith sneak out of dinner. He sends a silent thanks to the head cook, who had been more than amenable to Shiro’s plan, and makes a show of snagging an apple and slipping it into his shirtfront. 

Keith grabs two apples, three bags of trail mix, and starts to look a little desperate when he’s clearly not going to be able to fit anything more into his uniform without looking suspicious. 

“Here,” Shiro says, settling a hand on his shoulder. “I’ll grab some extra for you, but then you can come back here and get more if you need it, okay? Any time you want.”

He holds Keith’s gaze, and Keith reluctantly hands over a bag of trail mix for Shiro to shove in his pocket before nodding once.

“What if I get caught?” he asks quietly, eyes traveling covetously over the shapes of the industrial-sized fridge and cupboards. Shiro hopes he can limit himself to the things that the cook leaves out; the last thing Shiro wants Keith to have to deal with is some cadet complaining up the chain about his roommate hoarding perishable food items. Frankly, he’s lucky it hasn’t happened yet.

“Don’t worry about it,” Shiro says, looking him in the eye again. “The food is here for all of us to eat. No one will care.”

Keith doesn’t look like he believes him, but he lets it go, eyeing the pantry one last time before heading slowly to the exit. Shiro breathes a sigh of relief, and pulls the door behind them as they go. It’s a start, he thinks.

\--

II.

After the proverbial dust settles on the Castle Ship, and they’re over the initial shock of learning to fly giant space lion robots and fight evil by forming a robot warrior in space, things start to fall into a bit of a routine. Shiro’s still relearning himself, if he’s honest, trying to navigate the amount of damage the Galra did to his body and his psyche. He never thought he’d see Earth again, let alone see anyone he cared about. Never thought he’d see Keith.

The abrupt and sweeping changes in their lives mean that everyone’s processing things a little differently, but Shiro settles in to watching them all, just like he always has. It’s important for a leader to have an informed and realistic assessment of his team’s strengths and weaknesses, so that they can encourage the strengths and help support the weaknesses, and so that they can have a clear understanding of how their decisions will impact their team.

Pidge is unquestionably brilliant, but also grieving and single-minded; Shiro can work with those. Hunk is terrified, but dependable and a hard worker, and that’s a combination Shiro will take any day. Lance is bravado and bluster to mask insecurity, but he tries hard and will come through in a pinch, and Shiro fully expects him to grow into a solid team member, given the time and space to do so.

Keith… Shiro worries about Keith. He’s been unable to get the full story of what happened after his own death was reported, but it’s clear that Keith’s been out in the desert alone for a little too long, keeping company with ghosts and theories rather than humans. Too much of the muscle he’d added to his frame in his time at the Garrison is gone, transferred into frantic energy. He’s wiry, but thin, and there’s a sharp edge to him that hurts Shiro to see. Having Shiro back hasn’t been enough to erase the damage done by his loss, and Shiro can’t help but want to bring back some of the softness, some of the health that had been Keith’s before Shiro left.

He starts with what he knows, and turns up at Keith’s door after training with a plate of experimental cookies from Hunk.

Keith eyeballs the plate, and Shiro’s sure Keith knows what he’s up to, but he doesn’t say a word, just steps aside and lets Shiro in. Shiro sets the plate between them on the floor, and puts a cookie into Keith’s hand every time the conversation lulls until the cookies are gone and they’re lying on their backs on the floor, quiet and replete. 

\--

Shiro starts to intentionally get too much food, either when Hunk’s cooking or when they’re visiting newly liberated planets, and slides bits of it onto Keith’s plate. He buys random alien snacks whenever they’re someplace new, and slips them into Red’s cockpit for the occasional downtimes between fights. He guides their post workout route back to their quarters past the kitchen, “just in case Hunk’s working on something new.”

“You’re not subtle, you know,” Keith says to him early on, but Shiro just shrugs. 

“Wasn’t trying to be,” he answers, and Keith smiles. 

It’s working, slowly but surely - Keith’s frame fills out, his muscles grow. He’s looking fit and fleet again, like a young man who’s capable of great things. Shiro takes pride in the improvement, in the relaxation that sinks into Keith’s shoulders in off moments, in the little pleasures Keith will allow himself when he thinks no one is looking. 

And then Shiro dies.

\--

III.

“You gonna start feeding me again?” Keith rasps when he wakes up in the hospital and finds Shiro at his bedside. It’s meant as a joke, but Shiro just looks pointedly at the small pile of sweets and fruit that sits on Keith’s nightstand, and Keith starts to laugh.

Shiro raises an eyebrow and unwraps a chocolate, waiting until Keith’s gotten himself under control before popping it into Keith’s open mouth. 

\--

“Not that I mind,” Keith says weeks later as they lie side-by-side on the Atlas, Shiro systematically sectioning an orange and pressing slice after slice into Keith’s sticky hand, “but what is it with you and feeding me?”

The tone is light-hearted, but the question is serious, so Shiro gives it a moment to settle as he sinks his fingernails into the rind above the next section. 

“At first, I was just worried about you,” he says finally, “and I wanted to make sure you had everything you needed to succeed and be happy. Some of that I couldn’t provide for you, but food I could, so I just started there.” 

Keith hums thoughtfully, his mouth full of orange, and Shiro smiles.

“After Kerberos, after Voltron… I think it was also an apology. I felt responsible for how much you’d clearly struggled” he says, skillfully shoving another orange slice into Keith’s mouth as he opens it to protest. “I know you say it’s not my fault, and intellectually I know that’s true. But it  _ felt  _ like my fault, seeing the evidence that the person I cared about so much had run himself ragged looking for me.” He tips his head to look Keith in the eye. “I wanted to fix it. I wanted to make it better. It was the only way I knew how, really - I was too much of a mess to be able to offer much else.”

“Now,” Shiro starts, pausing to reach over and catch a drop of juice as it drips from the corner of Keith’s mouth. He holds out his thumb and Keith licks it clean. “I do it because it makes me feel good. It’s a concrete way that I can take care of you, that I can show my concern for your wellbeing.” 

“How very naturalist of you,” Keith teases gently, and Shiro just shrugs and smiles. 

“Caring for your mate is a primate instinct. Making sure you’re well-fed makes me happy: it’s a thing I can control in the face of many I can’t, and one with an obvious and practical benefit.”

Keith leans over to pull the remains of the orange from his hand, shushing Shiro’s half-formed protest with a kiss. He sits up cross-legged and digs his thumbs into the remaining fruit before pulling a section free and holding it to Shiro’s mouth.

Shiro takes it willingly with his teeth, letting his lips close over Keith’s finger and thumb just to see him laugh in response. 

Keith reclaims his hand, and pulls loose another slice, his gaze full as he looks at Shiro. He holds it out, flesh plump and juice beginning to trickle between his fingers. 

“Guess I better start keeping up,” he says, and smiles.

**Author's Note:**

> i'd like to thank Pablo Neruda for writing so many poems that have lines i can steal for fic titles.


End file.
